Computer systems and related technology affect many aspects of society. Indeed, the computer system's ability to process information has transformed the way we live and work. Computer systems now commonly perform a host of tasks (e.g., word processing, scheduling, accounting, etc.) that prior to the advent of the computer system were performed manually. More recently, computer systems have been, and are being, developed in all shapes and sizes with varying capabilities.
Software components that run on the computer systems often get configured at runtime and store their configuration in in-memory data structures such as linked lists and trees. Sometimes, the configuration data consists in many entries, for example a file-system filter component might be configured to expose a virtual view of the underlying file system, consisting in several thousand or even tens of thousands of entries, as we see in some virtualization scenarios.
It is often the case that a computing system needs to be shut down or be rebooted. In such case, the configuration data may be lost if there is no way to save the configuration data state and to easily recover the saved configuration data state.
The subject matter claimed herein is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one exemplary technology area where some embodiments described herein may be practiced.